Privacy policy

Your personal information

The City of Vancouver is committed to protecting your privacy. Any personal information you provide to us is collected, used and disclosed in accordance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

The City does not automatically gather any personal information from you, such as your name, phone number, street or email address.

This information is only obtained if you supply it voluntarily, usually through contacting us via email or feedback form, or registering in a secure portion of the site.

Any personal information we ask you to provide is collected under the authority of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The information will only be used for the purpose of administering City services, informing you of our services and benefits, and for statistical purposes.

Tracking your website visit

We constantly improve this website to make it as useful to you as possible. To do this, we gather statistics about what pages you visit when you visit the site.

These statistics help us decide where to put information so it is easier to find and how to design tasks so they are faster to complete.

We gather this information about your visit by placing a small file, called a "cookie", into your web browser's memory.

This cookie does not collect any information we could use to identify you, such as your name, address, email address or phone number.

The cookie does collect:

Your IP address (a series of numbers that are automatically assigned to your computer when you go online).

The type of web browser and operating system you use.

The date and time you visited the site.

Which pages you visited.

The order you visited the pages.

How long you spent on each page.

The page you entered the site on.

The last page you looked at before you left.

As soon as you leave the vancouver.ca site, the cookie stops gathering information.

Volunteering your personal information online

The only time we collect your personal information on this website is when you volunteer to give it to us.

This includes when you:

Participate in an online forum or poll.

Fill in a feedback or contact form.

Click the "share this" button on any page.

Request further information about a specific topic.

Send us an email.

In these instances, we only keep your information so we can follow up with you, if necessary.

We keep your information completely confidential. We will not rent, share, or trade it with anyone else. We will not use it to send you information that you did not specifically request.

Email newsletters

We comply with Canada's anti-spam law when you to subscribe to our email newsletters.

When you subscribe, you authorize us to collect information about yourself solely to send you an email newsletter from time to time. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email newsletter.

You can contact us about this policy at info@vancouver.ca or City of Vancouver, 453 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, BC, V5Y 1V4.

Online transactions

You can pay for some City services - such as dog license renewals and parking tickets - on this website.

These transactions are done through SSL-encrypted technology. This means that your credit card and other payment information is transmitted to us securely. After your transaction is complete, we do not store your credit card or other payment information.

Registering for a recreation program

Before you can register for a recreation program, you need to set up an account. Your account is protected by password so only you can access it. Your personal information will be stored with your account, but your credit card information will not.

What you can do

For your protection, we strongly recommend that you do not provide your account information, user name, or password to anyone. If you become aware of any suspicious activity relating to your account, it is your responsibility to contact us immediately.

We'll keep you informed

As required by law, we will notify you of our privacy policy annually. We reserve the right to modify this policy at any time, but rest assured that if we do change it, we will tell you promptly.